Ross Jackson
Another Absence
Choked on unspent feeling,
the boy butted a warm wind
that poured down the shore
beside him and into the
girl’s clouded face.
Mid morning sun had boiled
in the belly of the lake;
the boy’s splintery shadow
spilling to the edge of an
inland sea of billowing
silver lamé.
In the weedy shallows,
as the stilted silence signified
there was nothing doing,
nothing floated.
Sixty years hence,
unsecured in a serviced room
with conditioned air and sepia drapes,
he eyes the slimy circle of
last night’s custard and prunes,
revisiting another absence
beside the glittering lake.
Ross Jackson is a long term resident of Perth. A retired teacher, he has had poetry and short stories published locally and interstate. Some of his work has been recognised in competitions. Jackson writes: “Feelings of loneliness in isolated locations are not uncommon in my poems. For the elderly, nostalgia is an addictive draught, the bitterness of regret being its aftertaste.”